Tag: engineering

India’s Pragyan rover has successfully been deployed on the lunar surface

9:23 am


Click for interactive map.

According to a tweet from India’s space agency ISRO late yesterday, the Pragyan rover has successfully rolled down its ramp and is now deployed on the lunar surface.

No further updates have yet been released. According to ISRO’s mission webpage the instruments on both Vikram and Pragyan are as follows:

Lander payloads: Chandra’s Surface Thermophysical Experiment (ChaSTE) to measure the thermal conductivity and temperature; Instrument for Lunar Seismic Activity (ILSA) for measuring the seismicity around the landing site; Langmuir Probe (LP) to estimate the plasma density and its variations. A passive Laser Retroreflector Array from NASA is accommodated for lunar laser ranging studies.

Rover payloads: Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) and Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscope (LIBS) for deriving the elemental composition in the vicinity of landing site.

Pragyan’s two spectroscopes are likely similar to instruments on Curiosity and Perseverance on Mars, and allows some good surface analysis. Without a scoop however there will be no analysis of anything below the ground, unless the rover can upend a rock using its wheels.

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Rocket Lab launches a satellite reusing one rocket engine from previous flight

9:20 pm

Rocket Lab not only successfully launched a satellite tonight (August 24 in New Zealand), its first stage used a rocket engine that had flown previously.

In addition, the first stage was designed to be reused, and was quickly recovered after it splashed down in the Pacific. The plan is to refly either this or another recovered first stage in one of the company’s upcoming launches in the coming months, making Rocket Lab the second private company in the world, after SpaceX, to reuse a first stage.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

57 SpaceX
36 China
12 Russia
7 Rocket Lab

In the national rankings, American private enterprise now leads China in successful launches 66 to 36. It also leads the entire world combined, 66 to 59. SpaceX by itself still trails the rest of the world (excluding American companies) 57 to 59 in successful launches.

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Where the Martian landscape begins to dry out

12:30 pm

Where Mars begins to dry out
Click for original image.

Today’s cool image to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, provides us a glimpse at the lower mid-latitudes of Mars where the terrain is beginning to dry out as we move south. The picture was taken on April 29, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), and shows what the scientists label “large linear features.”

The main north-south ridge is only about 20-25 feet high, and its meandering nature (which can be seen more clearly in the full image) suggests it is possibly an inverted channel, formed when the bed of a former canyon gets compressed by the water or ice that flows through it, and when the surrounding terrain gets eroded away that channel bed becomes a ridge.

These ridges however could also possibly be volcanic dikes, where magma had pushed up through fractures and faults to form these more resistant ridges.
» Read more

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First mission in Isaacman’s private space program delayed again

9:56 am

The first mission in the Polaris space program of manned flights by billionaire Jared Isaacman, using SpaceX’s manned spacecraft and rockets, has now been delayed until early in 2024.

Isaacman, in the podcast interview, suggested the delays were linked to the development of a new spacesuit required for a spacewalk, the first by a private astronaut mission, planned for Polaris Dawn. “We’ve had a little bit more free time this summer than we probably would have expected,” he said, which he attributed to the timing of spacesuit development and training. That effort “doesn’t always sync up, so we’ve had a little more free time with family and work this summer.”

That new suit, billed as the first new spacesuit developed in the United States in four decades, is critical to future human activities on moon and Mars, he argued. “We’re going to need spacesuits that don’t cost hundreds of millions of dollars in order to do that. We’re pretty excited because the suit that we are testing out, the evolution of it someday could be very well worn by people that are walking on the moon or Mars.”

This mission, dubbed Polaris Dawn, will use a Falcon 9 and one of SpaceX’s fleet of four manned Dragon capsules to spend several days in Earth orbit while conducting that first private spacewalk. Isaacman’s entire Polaris program includes two more manned missions,the second possibly aimed at raising and even doing maintenance on the Hubble Space Telescope, and the third using Starship to go around the Moon.

Isaacman has already flown one private mission in space, in 2021, dubbed Inspiration4. It flew for three days in orbit, carrying four passengers, including Isaacman himself. Since it did not dock with ISS, it was an entirely private manned mission, with no significant government involvement.

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Space junk that ESA demo mission intends to de-orbit as been struck by another piece of space junk

9:44 am

In a strange bit of irony, an abandoned payload adapter from a mission launched a decade ago that a European Space Agency (ESA) mission was planning on capturing and de-orbiting has been hit by another piece of space junk, creating additional bits debris around it.

The adapter is a conical-shaped leftover, roughly 250 pounds (113 kg) in mass, from a 2013 Vega launch that sent a small fleet of satellites into orbit. Space tracking systems found new objects nearby the adapter, which ESA learned about on Aug. 10. The objects are likely space debris from a “hypervelocity impact of a small, untracked object” that smacked into the payload adapter, the agency said. We may never know if the crashing object was natural or artificial, given it didn’t appear in tracking systems.

The ESA mission, dubbed Clearspace-1, intends to launch in 2026 and use four grappling arms to grasp the payload adapter, after which both shall be sent to burn up in the atmosphere. Its goal is to demonstrate technology for removing space junk. This event, creating extra debris pieces around the payload adaptor, puts a kink on that mission while also underlining the need for such technology.

Mission engineers now have three years to figure out what, if anything, they need to do to deal with the extra debris. The good news so far is that it appears the payload adapter remains intact, its orbit has not changed, and the surrounding debris appears small enough to pose “negligible” risk.

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India successfully lands Vikram on the Moon

9:10 am


Click for interactive map.

India this morning successfully placed its Vikram lander, carrying its Pragyan rover, on the surface of the Moon in the high southern latitudes.

I have embedded the live stream below, cued to just before landing.

The next challenge is getting Pragyan to roll off Vikram, and spend the next two weeks exploring the nearby terrain. The mission of both it and Vikram is only planned to last through the daylight portion of the 28-day-long lunar day, so it is not expected for either to survive the lunar night. Both will make observations, but the main purpose of this mission has already been accomplished, demonstrating that India has the technological capability to land an unmanned spacecraft on another planet. That the landing was in the high southern latitudes added one extra challenge to the mission.

» Read more

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Russia launches Progress freighter to ISS

9:56 pm

Russia tonight successfully used its Soyuz-2 rocket to launch a new Progress freighter to ISS, lifting off from its Baikonur spaceport in Kazakhstan.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

57 SpaceX
36 China
12 Russia
6 Rocket Lab
6 India

In the national rankings, American private enterprise still leads China in successful launches 65 to 36. It also leads the entire world combined, 65 to 59. SpaceX by itself is still in a neck-in-neck race with the rest of the world (excluding American companies), now trailing 57 to 59 in successful launches.

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The very tip of a thousand-mile-long crack on Mars

11:25 am

The very tip of a 1000-mile-long Martian crack
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on June 22, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the scientists label as “The tip of Cerberus Fossae,” a thousand-mile-long crack in the surface of Mars formed when the ground was pulled apart by underground forces.

If you look closely at the picture’s right edge, you can see that beyond the end of the fissure it actually continues but appears filled with material. In the full picture this however is the end of the crack. Beyond this point the ground is as smooth and as generally featureless as seen within the picture itself, and as also shown in this MRO context camera view of the same area.

Cerberus Fossae is actually three parallel cracks, with this the northernmost one. The eastern tip of the middle crack was previously highlighted in a cool image in July 2022.
» Read more

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Proposed Las Vegas spaceport signs deal with launch startup

9:46 am

A private spaceport proposed for the desert west of Las Vegas has signed a deal with launch startup company to wants to use a 747 to launch reusable rockets.

Robert Lauer, director of Las Vegas Spaceport, announced a partnership with O-G Launch, a company headed by Robert Feierbach. Feierbach’s company aims to be a part of the commercial space industry by launching satellites from recyclable rockets deployed from large jets.

Terms of the partnership were not disclosed, but it is expected that companies seeking to deploy satellites would use O-G Launch aircraft starting from the Las Vegas Spaceport to launch a satellite-bearing rocket from 40,000 feet.

To put it mildly, this project is hardly a spaceport. It is planned as a casino, a resort, and a flight school with a runway. O-G helps give it the appearance of a spaceport by allowing it to claim orbital launches will take place there. Whether O-G ever takes off is another thing entirely. Its presence as part of the project, however, provides great PR for attracting customers to the proposed resort/casino.

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Redwire to build biotech lab in Sierra Space’s LIFE space station

9:38 am

Sierra Space announced yesterday that — as part of its private space station module dubbed LIFE — it is partnering with Redwire to install a commercial biotech lab in the module.

The hardware includes equipment that Redwire has previously developed for the International Space Station, such as the Advanced Space Experiment Processor, which hosts biotech experiments. A particular focus will be on crystallization experiments, using the microgravity environment to grow larger crystals that can then be studied to determine their structure for pharmaceutical applications.

The companies did not disclose terms of the contract other than that Redwire will start delivering hardware in the fourth quarter of this year. Gold said that the companies will also partner on business development to identify customers for using the experiment platform.

The target date for the launch of LIFE is presently 2026, though it was not revealed when Redwire’s equipment would be installed.

What struck me about this deal is the shrinking mention of Blue Origin. Originally that company was listed as one of the major players in building this private space station, dubbed Orbital Reef, in which LIFE is only the first module. In the past year however its participation seems less and less significant in every subsequent press release. It appears to still be part of the project, but it is Sierra Space that is leading the effort, and appears to be making things happen.

But then, the track record of Blue Origin is to not make things happen. It could very well be that events are once again overtaking it. Sierra Space can’t wait for Blue Origin to slowly get its act together. It is finding ways to get things done, even if that means Blue Origin gets left behind.

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Space Force awards multi-satellite contracts to Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman

9:26 am

Capitalism in space: In what is a landmark deal indicating the complete shift by the military from building its own satellites to letting private enterprise do it, the Space Development Agency (SDA) of the Space Force yesterday announced it has awarded Lockeheed Martin and Northrop Grumman each a contract to build and operate 36 satellites.

The 72 satellites will make up a portion of SDA’s network known as Tranche 2 Transport Layer. SDA is building a large constellation called the proliferated warfighter space architecture that includes a Transport Layer of interconnected communications satellites and a Tracking Layer of missile-detection and warning sensor satellites. Northrop Grumman’s contract for 36 satellites is worth approximately $733 million. The agreement with Lockheed Martin, also for 36 satellites, is worth $816 million, SDA said.

What makes this contract different than previous military satellite contracts is that the military will do relatively little design. It has released the basic specifications, and is asking private enterprise to do the work for it. It is a customer, not a builder. When the military attempted its own design and construction, the job would take sometimes a decade or more, cost many billions (with cost overruns), and often failed. This new constellation is targeting a 2026 launch, only two years from now.

The constellation will also be more robust than the gold-plated giant satellites the military would build previously. Rather than rely on a single do-it-all satellite which is easy to take out, the constellation has many satellites, and can easily compensate if one or even a few are damaged or destroyed.

This shift was one of the fundamental reasons the military wanted to create a separate Space Force. As part of the Air Force the office politics within that branch of the military had been impossible to make this shift. Too many managers in the Air Force liked building big gold-plated satellites. Once the Space Force took over those managers were taken out of the equation.

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Russian engineers pinpoint approximate crash site of Luna-25

9:07 am

Russian engineers have pinpointed the approximate crash site of Luna-25 on the Moon as the 42-mile-wide crater Pontecoulant G, located at about 59 degrees south latitude, 66 east longitude.

Researchers from the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Keldysh Institute of Applied Mathematics have simulated the trajectory of the Luna-25 mission, figuring out where and when it crashed into the moon’s surface, the institute said in a statement on Telegram. “The mathematical modeling of the trajectory of the Luna-25 spacecraft, carried out by experts from the Ballistic Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Keldysh Institute of Applied Mathematics, made it possible to determine the time and place of its collision with the moon,” the statement reads.

According to the institute, the spacecraft fell into the 42-kilometer Pontecoulant G crater in the southern hemisphere of the moon at 2:58 p.m. Moscow time on August 19.

The planned landing site, in Boguslawsky Crater at 73 degrees south latitude and 43 degrees east longitude, was many miles away.

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SpaceX launches 21 Starlink satellites using Falcon 9

8:50 am

Using a Falcon 9 rocket with a first stage making its 15th flight, SpaceX early this morning launched 21 Starlink satellites, lifting off from Vandenberg in California.

The first stage landed successfully on a drone ship in the Pacific. SpaceX now has two first stages that have flown 16 times, and one that has flown 15 times. Those 47 flights like reduced the launch cost of those launches by about 70%. Since no other rocket company can do this, SpaceX can pocket the profits since it isn’t forced to lower prices as much as it would if it had some real competition.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

57 SpaceX
36 China
11 Russia
6 Rocket Lab
6 India

In the national rankings, American private enterprise now leads China in successful launches 65 to 36. It also leads the entire world combined, 65 to 58. SpaceX by itself remains in a neck-in-neck race with the rest of the world (excluding American companies), trailing 57 to 58 in successful launches.

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Axiom raises $350 million in private investment capital

11:53 am

Axiom's space station assembly sequence
The assembly sequence for Axiom’s space station while attached to ISS.
Click for original image.

Axiom announced today that in its most recent round of funding it raised an additional $350 million in private investment capital, almost tripling the private capital it has obtained in total.

Axiom Space announced today that it secured $350 million in its Series-C round of growth funding, lifting the total funds raised to over $505 million from investors and achieving more than $2.2 billion in customer contracts.

To date, Aljazira Capital and Boryung Co., Ltd., have anchored the round, paired with support from an array of diverse backers that include deep-tech venture capital funds and strategic brand partners, positioning Axiom Space as second to SpaceX for the most amount of money raised by a private space company in 2023, based on available pitchbook data.

The press release also reaffirms the company’s planned schedule for its space station project, with the first module launching and attaching to ISS in 2026. The graphic shows the assembly sequence, with the rear docking port the one linked to ISS. When assembly reaches the stage of the fourth image it will then be able to separate from ISS and fly independently in 2031. That last number however is one year later than NASA’s previous predictions for the retirement of ISS, suggesting Axiom knows something NASA has not yet told us.

Hat tip to Jay, BtB’s stringer.

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A Martian wedding cake surrounded by brain terrain

11:24 am

Brain terrain surrounding a Martian wedding cake
Click for original image.

Of all many cool images I’ve posted, today might take the cake (pun intended) for the best illustration of the alien nature of Mars. The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on June 28, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), and shows what the scientists simply label as “flow features.”

I personally don’t see any obvious flow features in the full image, unless one wants to call the brain terrain that covers this entire plain a flow feature. Brain terrain is a feature unique to Mars whose origin remains a mystery to geologists. As noted by scientists in captioned MRO image in 2019:

You are staring at one of the unsolved mysteries on Mars. This surface texture of interconnected ridges and troughs, referred to as “brain terrain” is found throughout the mid-latitude regions of Mars.

…This bizarrely textured terrain may be directly related to the water-ice that lies beneath the surface. One hypothesis is that when the buried water-ice sublimates (changes from a solid to a gas), it forms the troughs in the ice. The formation of these features might be an active process that is slowly occurring since HiRISE [MRO’s high resolution camera] has yet to detect significant changes in these terrains.

The wedding cake inside the small crater to the upper right only adds to the alienness of this terrain.
» Read more

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Watch the landing attempt of Chandrayaan-3’s Vikram lander on August 23, 2023

9:39 am


Click for interactive map.

After separating from its Chandrayaan-3 propulsion module on August 17, 2023, India’s Vikram lunar lander has been slowly making orbital adjustments in preparation for its landing attempt on August 23rd.

I have embedded the live stream of that landing attempt below. As it is scheduled for 6:04 pm (India time), in India, in the U.S. that landing will occur in the early morning hours of August 23rd.

Following the failed crash on the Moon of Russia’s lunar lander Luna-25 yesterday, this landing attempt is likely to garner a lot more interest. It is also India’s second attempt, having failed in 2019 when its Vikram lander ran out of fuel before landing and crashed.
» Read more

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China’s Long March 4C rocket places Earth observation satellite into orbit

9:14 am

China yesterday used its Long March 4C rocket to put what that country’s state-run press calls an “Earth observation satellite” into orbit, lifting off from the Jiuquan spaceport in the interior.

No word on whether the rocket’s first stage crash landed near habitable areas, as China’s disposable first stages often do.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

56 SpaceX
36 China
11 Russia
6 Rocket Lab
6 India

American private enterprise still leads China in successful launches 64 to 36 in the national rankings, while the entire world combined 64 to 58. SpaceX alone now trails the entire world (excluding American companies) 56 to 58.

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Luna-25 lost after crashing on Moon

9:37 am

During its last major orbital burn, Luna-25’s engines apparently fired for longer than planned so that, instead of placing it into a lower orbit, the spacecraft was de-orbited and sent crashing onto the lunar surface.

The Russian space agency noted that all measures regarding the location of the spacecraft and establishing communications with it on August 19 and 20 yielded zero results. “Preliminary analysis results suggest that a deviation between the actual and calculated parameters of the propulsion maneuver led the Luna-25 spacecraft to enter an undesignated orbit and it ceased to exist following a collision with the surface of the Moon,” Roscosmos stated.

This is a tragedy for Russia, as this mission hoped to re-establish it as one of the major players in the exploration of the solar system. Instead, we once again have a data point suggesting significant quality control problems within Russia’s aerospace industry. Its misplaced focus on providing government jobs rather than actually building and quickly flying spacecraft and rockets results too often in failure.

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Luna-25 fails to enter orbit for landing on Moon

12:23 pm

Though it is in lunar orbit, Russia’s Luna-25 lander today was unable to perform an engine burn as planned to place it in its final orbit for landing.

“Today, in accordance with the flight program of the Luna-25 probe, at 2:10 p.m. Moscow time, a command was issued to the probe to enter the pre-landing orbit. During the operation an emergency occurred on the space probe that did not allow it to perform the maneuver in accordance with the required parameters,” Roscosmos said.

Engineers are analyzing the issue, but no other information was released.

This issue could simply be the spacecraft’s computer aborted the engine burn because it sensed something not right, and that after some correction another burn can follow later. Under this circumstance the landing attempt would simply be delayed.

It is also possible something happened during that engine burn, and the spacecraft is either in an incorrect orbit, or might even be lost entirely. Stay tuned.

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Mars’ endless cycles of glacial activity

10:46 am

Overview map

Mars' endless cycles of glacial activity
Click for original image.

While the images being sent to us from Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) repeatedly show features that appear convincingly like glaciers, the data is also beginning to tantalize us with evidence of the endless glacial cycles that have occurred on Mars.

The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on June 27, 2023 by MRO’s high resolution camera. The red dot in the inset of the overview map above shows the location, the western flanks of an apron that surrounds a 3,800-foot-high mesa in the chaos region Deuteronilus Mensae, the western end of the 2,000-mile-long mid-latitude strip of chaos regions I dub glacier country, because every image seems to show some form of glacial feature.

Today’s picture is no different. The apron shown here drops the last 1,000 feet of the mesa’s total 3,800-foot height, during which it shows dozens of what the scientists label “parallel lines.” These lines likely reveal the layers of glacial ice in this apron, with the older layers larger and more extensive. Apparently, with each growth cycle the glacier obtained less snow from the atmosphere, so the more recent layers grew less.

In other words, the amount of water on Mars has been declining with time.

Untangling these numerous layers will undoubtedly give us a remarkably detailed history of Mars entire geological history. Unfortunately, that untangling cannot happen until we have boots on the ground, on Mars, able to drill core samples from many different places.

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Regulatory problems for Saxavord spaceport in Shetland?

9:53 am

In a short statement reported in the local Shetland press, the under-construction Saxavord spaceport in Scotland has apparently laid off some construction workers, claiming it has done so “because the project was so far ahead of schedule.”

The statement however also alluded to the United Kingdom’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), which must issue a launch license before any launches can occur.

SaxaVord Spaceport said: “SaxaVord continues to have excellent dialogue with the authorities and is fully expecting to receiving its spaceport licence very soon from the Civil Aviation Authority. We are looking forward to hosting vertical rocket launches in the coming months.”

The application for this launch license was submitted in November 2022. It appears that the CAA still needs a year or more to approve any launch license, a slow and endless process that if not corrected will make launches from the United Kingdom completely unprofitable.

Saxavord had hoped to get its first launch off this year, by fall. It now appears that will not happen.

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Luna-25 takes first image of lunar surface

9:07 am

Luna-25's first lunar image
Click for interactive map. Zeeman is located on the lower left.

Russia’s state-run press today issued the first picture taken by Luna-25 after entering lunar orbit two days ago. That picture, to the right and cropped and reoriented to post here, shows part of Zeeman Crater at 75 degrees south latitude and 135 degrees west, on the far side of the Moon. From the TASS announcement:

“The Luna-25 spacecraft, flying in a circular orbit as the Moon’s artificial satellite, has taken pictures of the lunar surface with television cameras of the STS-L system. The image, taken today at 08:23 Moscow time, shows the southern polar crater Zeeman on the far side of the Moon. The coordinates of the crater center are 75 degrees south and 135 degrees west,” the state corporation said. Roscosmos said the Zeeman crater is of great interest to researchers. Its rim rises eight kilometers above its relatively flat floor.

The picture shows Zeeman’s southern rim to the left, with its pockmarked crater floor to the right. The crater the lander is targeting, Broguslawsky Crater, sits in the opposite hemisphere of Zeeman, slightly closer to the south pole but on the Moon’s near side.

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The inexplicable behavior of Martian dust devils

11:49 am

The inexpicable behavior of Martian dust devils
Click for original image.

Today’s cool image illustrates the puzzling inclination of Martian dust devils to strongly favor specific regions on the Martian surface, for reasons that at present no one can confidently explain.

The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on June 28, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows a plethora of dust devil tracks, almost all of which have an east-west orientation. Moreover, the tracks seem uninfluenced by the surface topography, continuing on their path without deviation, even as they cross cliffs, craters, and mounds. The orientation tells us the direction of the prevailing winds, though I don’t know if those winds blow to the east or to the west.

What makes this image revealing is that a gathering of such dust devil tracks is seen so rarely in other MRO high resolution photographs. I look at a lot of MRO pictures, and though dust devil tracks are not rare, most images don’t show this many. Apparently, there are specific conditions on Mars that cause a lot of tracks to appear in specific locations, either because atmospheric conditions create a lot more dust devils, or the ground conditions allow the tracks to become more visible.
» Read more

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Ball Aerospace purchased by BAE Systems

9:57 am

BAE Systems today announced it has purchased from Ball Corporation its aerospace division, Ball Aerospace, for $5.6 billion.

It appears that the Ball corporation wants to focus its business plan around its “circular aluminum packaging for global beverage and household brands,” rather than aerospace. This sale essentially concludes the company’s slow transition away from its long time space business, which began just prior to Sputnik in 1956. It is essentially out of that business now, and instead has returned entirely to its packaging roots from the late 1800s.

BAE meanwhile strengthens its focus on space, both in the commercial and defense markets, with the addition of the Ball Aerospace division, which has been in the space business for decades.

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The ups and downs of capitalism in space

9:44 am

Two stories today illustrate how allowing freedom and capitalism to rule in the development of America’s aerospace industry carries with it the potential for wonderful achievements as well as depressing failures.

First the potential failure. Despite having successfully flown several missions demonstrating its orbital tug and service module for cubesats, the company Momentus has been forced to lay off 30% of its staff because of dwindling cash reserves.

Momentus reported a record quarterly revenue of $1.7 million in the second quarter, the first time it reported revenues of more than $1 million in a quarter. However, the company reported a net loss of $18.8 million and ended the quarter with $21.6 million of cash and equivalents on hand.

The company is presently scrambling to find new sources of investment capital, as it does not expect its income to grow sufficiently in the next year to keep itself above water, even though it should successfully fly more flights of its Vigoride orbital tug as well as a new service module version.

Next we have the potential achievement: The financial status of the startup satellite company Terran Orbital appears healthy and strong, mostly because of a $2.6 billion contract to build 300 satellites for the wireless communications company Rivada Space Networks. The first $180 million payment under that contract is expected this year.

At the same time, there are storm clouds in the distance, as there remain unanswered questions about whether Rivada has the resources sufficient to fulfill the contract.

During Terran Orbital’s Aug. 15 earnings call, H.C. Wainwright & Co analyst Scott Buck said Rivada’s vagueness about its plans for financing the constellation has caused “investor hesitation around the contract.”

Terran Orbital has already a number of successes building satellites for others, with its most significant achievement the CAPSTONE lunar orbiter it built for NASA. If the Rivada contract falls through I suspect the company will still be able to garner plenty of customers to survive.

For Momentus the situation is more dire, especially because it already faces strong competition from a number of other orbital tug companies.

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Chandrayaan-3’s Vikram lander separates from its propulsion module; Luna-25 in lunar orbit

9:08 am


Click for interactive map.

The two probes aiming to land in the high southern latitudes of the Moon in the next week are now both in lunar orbit and preparing for their planned landings.

First India’s Chandrayaan-3: With its propulsion module having completed the job of getting Chandrayaan-3 from Earth to lunar orbit, the Vikram lander today separated from that module in preparation for firing its own engines on August 23, 2023 and landing on the Moon.

Vikram needs to make several orbital adjustments before that landing attempt.

Second, Russia’s Luna-25 probe entered lunar orbit yesterday, where it will spend the next few days making its own orbital adjustments before attempting its landing on August 21st.

Vikram carries a small rover, Pragyan. Luna-25 is only a lander, though it has a scoop and will do analysis of the lunar soil below it. Neither is landing “near the south pole”, as most news sources are saying. They are landing at latitudes comparable to landing in the Arctic on Earth, on the northern coast of Alaska. As such, neither will find out anything about the question of remnant ice in south pole’s permanently shadowed regions.

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SpaceX launches another 22 Starlink satellites from Cape Canaveral

8:59 pm

SpaceX tonight successfully launched another 22 Starlink satellites into orbit. its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral at 11:36 pm Eastern.

The first stage completed its thirteenth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. The two fairings completed their 10th and 11th flights, respectively. As of posting the satellites had not yet deployed.

SpaceX has another launch scheduled only hours hence, at midnight (Pacific) from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, aiming to put another 22 Starlink satellites in orbit using a first stage flying for its fifteenth time.

Until that second launch, the leaders at this moment in the 2023 launch race are as follows:

56 SpaceX
35 China
11 Russia
6 Rocket Lab
6 India

In successful launches, American private enterprise now leads China 64 to 35 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 64 to 57. SpaceX by itself trails the rest of the world combined (excluding American companies) 56 to 57, but this will become a tie if the second launch occurs as planned.

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An avalanche in the West Virginia of Mars

11:53 am

An avalanche in the West Virginia of Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken on June 27, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

I have cropped it to focus on this one hill, about 900 feet high (though the elevation data from MRO is somewhat uncertain at this resolution), because of that major landslide on its northern slopes. At some point in the past a major piece of the exposed bedrock at the top broke off and slide about halfway down the mountain, almost as a unit, settling on the alluvial fill that comprises the bottom half of the hill’s flanks.

The bedrock surrounding the peak is also of interest because of its gullies, all of which were created by downward flowing material. Was it ice? Water? Sand? Or maybe a combination of two or three? If water or ice was involved it was a very long time ago, as this location is in the dry equatorial regions of Mars. There is little known near-surface ice here.
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